Intro to CATs
Creative Arts Therapies (CATs) are mental, physical, and emotional health specialties that integrate art, dance, music, theater, and poetry to foster authentic healing, enhance self-awareness, and provide multidimensional forms of communication. In the 1970s, The National Coalition of Creative Arts Therapies Association (NCCATA) was established to provide continuing education, grant professional credentials, and support research and development in CATs to integrate them into mainstream medicine, healthcare, and insurance.
CATs
Within the NCCATA are five associations:
American Art Therapy Association (AATA)
American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA)
American Music Therapy Association (AMTA)
North American Drama Therapy Association (NADTA)
National Association of Poetry Therapy (NAPT)
Language is a limited form of communication. The words fear, pain, or sadness are single words that encapture a large umbrella of human experiences. In a story, language can paint the intensity of these experiences. Other forms of expression can do the same and perhaps more.
Improvisation within CATs is often used to explore patterns, themes, and relationships between the mind and body. The 2010 article Making Health Care Whole shares how a dance therapist may ask a patient to perform a gesture that represents a current challenge and share their wishes toward this challenge. A man may make a fist and draw it toward his torso and wish to be left alone because of fear of recurrent cancer. The dance therapist would explore this gesture with him in various amplifying movements and find a clarified emotional connection. This exercise may bring awareness about his most important relationships. The dance therapist would then develop movements to help him accept offers of support and allow others to come close.
Therapeutic treatment for physical, mental, and emotional challenges requires tailored treatment plans for the individual’s needs. Even if two people share the same traumatic experience or illness, their ways of expressing their feelings differ as much as their learning styles. “A growing body of research is demonstrating the effectiveness of the CATs in alleviating stress, helping patients cope with pain, and giving them the courage to adapt to their uncertain future.”
Meditation & CATs:
From my Meditation Teacher Training, I noticed that after meditation, emotions, memories, and traumas may arise. Meditation has the potential to progress our personal truths and CATs to help express them. In combination, these can help us find the strength within ourselves to lift depression, anxiety, and learned helplessness, reduce negative self-talk, self-harm, and addiction, and prevent stress-related conditions such as high blood pressure, chronic pain, and auto-immune diseases.
Post meditation is a valuable time, not only to heal traumas and strong emotions but also to document brilliant ideas, self-discovery, and progress in mental, physical, and emotional healing. It’s a perfect time for writing, drawing, and mind mapping.
A recent time when art therapy helped me was last December, I was living in my family’s living room with other family members who treated me negatively. During a particularly argumentative week, I sought refuge outside the house where I would spend hours drawing churches from reference books and photos. This helped me to create a mental sanctuary, relax my nervous system, and cultivate a feeling of safety.
Meditation is for relaxing the mind and body and CATs are for attending to the individual and healing a sense of self. I enjoy that art is not a solution that requires medication, restrictions, or asking you to do anything that makes you feel unsafe.
CATs are asking you to be yourself.
October 6th, 2024
